Domestic Notes

Today is a day of frabjous joy, calloo, callay. On Monday, Goodwill came by and took all the stuff we thought worth donating, which emptied half of the half of the garage that had "stuff" in it. Today, the garbage men came by and took the other half. We had to take everything -- large bags of garbage, plus cabinets that the previous owners had left in the garage, and some large pieces of cardboard coverings that some of our furniture had come in -- out to the curb last night and attach the special markers that LA requires on "extra" garbage. Today the garbageman came by for our pickup, and he sorted through the 10 or so garbage bags we put out for stuff he'd like to keep.

I don't know how every district does this, but in LA the city provides every home gets one large trash container and an identical leaf clippings container, plus a smaller yellow box for recycling materials. In point of fact, you can put out any amount of recycling materials, provided that the container (say, a grocery bag) is no larger than the yellow box. If you have extra bags of garbage, you can buy special yellow markers for $1 a piece. I guess these markers get collected and then some fee is added to our bill.

Anyhow...the upshot of all this trash talk (ha. ha.) is that I get to park in the garage now! Darin has always been parking in the garage, because he's got a nicer car. But now I can too, despite not having so nice a car. One good thing about not parking on the street is keeping down the pollen count.

We are so close to being fully moved in. A few boxes to go through here, a bit of sorting to do over there. It's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

We Didn't Know This When We Moved In Dept.: our neighbors two doors down are moving out. Turns out he is...one of the producers of Jurassic Park and The Lost World! I saw a moving guy carrying out a small scale model of one of the venom-spitting dinosaurs today. Evidently the producer and his wife are moving up the hill to fancier digs. Can you imagine saying, "Oh hey, I've got this script"...to someone like that?

I can't believe I didn't tell this story already: on Sunday, I went next door to get the name of our neighbor's gardener. He had the name and address, but not the phone number. "He works at the big house down the street too," my neighbor said. "They'll probably have it."

So, Sunday evening, I walked down to the big house and rang the bell. The man, P., who lives there, opened the door, and after I told him what I wanted, invited me in. He and his wife C. were having a quiet Sunday evening. He asked me if I wanted lemonade, and we had a long chat about the neighborhood. C. wants to arrange a block party, to get everyone to meet each other. P. told me who lives in the various houses up and down the street.

P. showed me around his house, which is not only huge on the inside, but has a gigantic back yard. The dogs could easily get enough exercise running from one end of the yard to the other.

In one day I'd been in two neighboring houses. I never saw the insides of any of our neighboring condos in Cupertino. My parents have lived in San Francisco for years and don't speak on a regular basis to any of their neighbors.